The Week - March 14 2014 USA, Tygodniki, prasa, magazyny, Tygodniki, prasa, magazyny
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IS OBAMA’S
BUDGET
DOA?
thelastword
talkinoints
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Rep. John Boehner
thebestoftheusandinternationalmedia
Tough enough?
Obama’s Cold War showdown with Russia
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allouneedtoknowabouteerthinthatmatters
wwwtheweekcom
news
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What happened
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fi
The Boston Globe
What the columnists said
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CNN.com
e
The Washington Post
fi
s
NewRepublic.com
fi
Slate.com
Putin with his military commanders this week
What the editorials said
The Wall Street Journal
fi
It wasn’t all bad
■■
When this brutal winter’s snowdrifts threatened to bury
Minnesota farmer Greg Novak’s greenhouses, he started dig-
ging out like everyone else. Then he thought: Why not build a
really massive snowman? “As long as you’re moving it, might
as well do something practical with it,” he said. It took skid
loaders, a silage blower,
and hundreds of hours of
work, but people are trav-
eling from miles away
to see the giant, 50-foot
figure Novak calls Grand-
daddy. Novak is unfazed
by those questioning his
sanity. “It puts a smile on
people’s faces,” he said.
“When people smile,
you know you’ve done a
good thing.”
■■
This spring, Mary Ellen Suey
will finally meet the man who
rescued her as an abandoned
infant in an Indiana field 58 years
ago. Dave Hickman was 14 then
and out hunting squirrels with his
grandfather when they heard the
infant cooing.They whisked her
to a hospital and she was quickly
adopted, but Hickman has always
wondered about her fate. Late last
year he contacted retired county
Sheriff John Catey, who tracked
her down in California. On the
phone, Hickman and Suey felt an
immediate bond. “It’s almost as if
she was my baby,” said Hickman,
who will see her again in May.
■■
Seven-year-old SandhyaThakur is
finally getting a new family. A year
ago the building where she lived in
Mumbai suddenly collapsed, killing
more than 70 people, including the
girl’s entire family. She spent the
next 23 days in a hospital under the
care of senior nurse Veena Kadle. “I
felt an instant affection for the girl,”
said Kadle, and since Sandhya’s
release she and her husband, who
are childless, have been battling
India’s bureaucracy for permission
to adopt her. Last week they finally
won. “Now our family is complete,”
said Kadle’s mother-in-law.
,
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The Granddaddy of all snowmen
news
President Obama unveiled his 2015 budget proposal this
week, calling for more spending on infrastructure, job training,
and preschool education while reducing tax burdens on lower-
and middle-class workers and closing tax loopholes that ben-
efit the wealthy. The plan would reduce the annual defi-
cit to $564 billion, down from $649 billion in 2014.
The president’s budget also calls for expanding
the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to include
low-wage workers without children and to beef
up benefits for working families. To increase rev-
enues by $53 billion over 10 years, the plan also
calls for the implementation of the “Buffett Rule,”
imposing a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on individuals earn-
ing more than $1 million a year. “As a country, we’ve got to make
a decision if we’re going to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest
Americans or if we’re going to make smart investments necessary
to create jobs and grow our economy and expand opportunity for
every American,” Obama said.
The budget leaves entitlement spending “on cruise control,”
and by dropping his proposal to keep Social Security cost-
of-living increases in check, Obama isn’t even mak-
ing “a token outreach” to the GOP. His proposals on
military spending will reduce defense outlays rel-
ative to GDP to their lowest levels since 1940,
which “will impress Vladimir Putin, though not in
a good way.”
What the columnists said
If all budgets are political documents, Obama’s is
a “partisan opus,” said
in
Time.com
.
It is “chock-full of wedge issues, with each proposal “carefully cal-
ibrated to be individually popular.” It allows Democrats to run on
the populist issues without “risking a vote” on tax increases that
Republicans could exploit. But by rescinding the offer on entitle-
ment reform, said
in
TheDailyBeast.com
, Obama has
“kicked the can” on the fiscal reform necessary to tackle the coun-
try’s looming financial problems.
‘Chock-full of wedge issues’
Since Congress already set spending limits through 2015 in a bi-
partisan deal in December, the president’s budget is being seen as
a blueprint for the Democrats’ midterm election strategy rather
than as an attainable fiscal proposal. Republicans were quick to
condemn the plan, with House Speaker John Boehner calling it
Obama’s “most irresponsible budget yet.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-
Wis.), who negotiated the compromise bill with Sen. Patty Murray
(D-Wash.), called the budget “a campaign brochure.”
But expanding the EITC, closing corporate tax loopholes, and
funding infrastructure are all areas of common interest, said
in
NewRepublic.com
. Once the Ryan-Murray deal
expires in 2015, these proposals could be a basis for fruitful debate
on the next budget. And by proposing to expand EITC benefits,
Obama is effectively calling the Republicans’ bluff, said
in
NYMag.com
. Eager to shed their “royalist image,” Re-
publicans have been touting increased EITC benefits as a better in-
centive to work than a higher minimum wage. But now that the
president has proposed it, the GOP’s enthusiasm will disappear.
What the editorials said
The president’s budget won’t survive congressional opposition,
said
The New York Times
, but that doesn’t make it useless. The
document underscores vital national goals—reducing inequality,
rebuilding the economy—that could be achieved if Congress ended
unfair tax breaks for the rich. Expanding the EITC, for example,
provides an incentive to work for 5.8 million newly eligible work-
ers. Yet “every dollar” of the $651 billion in new revenue Obama
seeks over the next decade “will be resisted by Republicans.”
This budget will be rejected by “narrow-minded conservative par-
tisans,” said
in
NationalJournal.com,
just as Ryan’s
budget, expected next month, will be “denounced by stubborn
liberals.” Both parties fail to recognize that adapting to a global
economy, a technological revolution, and massive social change re-
quires innovative, “even radical” thinking. The White House and
Congress need to find a new formula for stimulating economic
growth while helping people adjust to a rapidly changing, more
competitive world. Unfortunately for Americans, “their leaders
aren’t up to the job.”
With this budget, “Obama is revving up the tax-and-spend en-
gines,” said
The Wall Street Journal
, supporting “inequality and
class warfare” big Democratic themes for the November elections.
Is Vladimir Putin nuts? After a phone conversation with the Russian
president this week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly
concluded that he’s “living in his own world,” and may not be “in
touch with reality.” Ah, but whose reality? In the reality of the West, the Soviet Union lost the great
“clash of civilizations,” and its collapse was a triumph for capitalism, democracy, and human rights.
But from where the former KGB agent sits, the dismemberment of the USSR was a tragic mistake.
For a window into Putin’s worldview, says David Brooks in
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this week, we should
look closely at the three Russian nationalist philosophers from the 19th and 20th centuries he often
quotes and has assigned underlings to read: Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Solovyov, and Ivan Ilyin.
All three, Brooks notes, advocate a grand, quasi-religious notion of “Russian exceptionalism” in
which Russia is destined to play a pivotal role in world history.The West, these philosophers preach,
is morally corrupt, excessively materialistic, and weak; hence Putin’s embrace of the Russian Ortho-
dox Church and his disdain for homosexuality and feminism. Only Russia, awakened to its destiny
by a bold visionary such as himself, can lead mankind out of the darkness. “The hour will come
when Russia will rise from disintegration and humiliation,” Ilyin wrote, “and begin an epoch of new
development and greatness.” Putin, in other words, is the mirror image of an American neocon—
messianic, Manichaean, and disdainful of international law and the sovereignty of other, lesser na-
tions. Recent history would suggest that when a country’s leader is blinded by grandiose ideology,
his adventures abroad—and at home—will not end as he envisions.
The New York Times
R
e
u
t
e
r
s
William Falk
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THE WEEK March 14, 2014
news
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When President Obama warned last week that there
would be “consequences” if Russia invaded Ukraine,
said
in
The Washington Post
, “you
could hear the laughter” all the way from the Kremlin—
followed by the rumbling of Russian military vehicles
rolling into Crimea. Russian President Vladimir Putin
knew Obama did not have “the intestinal fortitude
to stand up to him,” and that he would “talk
tough” but then seize on any opportunity to avoid
a confrontation. That’s exactly what Obama did
in drawing “a red line” on Syrian dictator Bashar
al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons—a threat that
he eagerly dropped when Putin offered to bro-
ker a deal with Assad. Putin further humiliated Obama when he
gave asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, said
in
NationalReview.com
. Whenever they’ve held joint public meetings,
Putin’s lack of respect for Obama has been blatant, as he dismis-
sively looks away whenever the president speaks, “treating him as
someone he could dupe or roll over at will.”
“independence”—while Bush did nothing to stop him. Don’t tell
that to the “muscle-bound manly men of the Right,” said
w
in
Prospect.org
. Hawkish Republicans like Sen. John
McCain and the chicken hawks on conservative talk radio are
now ecstatically blaming Putin’s aggression on Obama’s
weakness. “Action! They demand. We have to show
Putin who’s boss!” What action? It doesn’t matter.
“We must be strong! Strong strong strong!”
You don’t have to go to war to project strength,
said
in
CommentaryMagazine
.com
. In the five years since Obama took
office, U.S. foreign policy has undergone a
“general drift toward retreat” and disengagement. Americans are
“war weary” and increasingly isolationist. So autocratic thugs
don’t worry when Obama frowns and claims that all options are
“on the table,” because everyone knows his heart isn’t in it.
Obama: Limited leverage
“From where Putin sits, American power hardly seems in retreat,”
said
in
TheAtlantic.com
. A dozen former Soviet bloc
countries have joined NATO, and the European Union is knock-
ing at Ukraine’s door. In short, recent history looks to Putin like
“one long march by America and its allies closer and closer to
the border of Russia itself.” It’s this deepening sense of his
own
weakness, not of Obama’s, that inspired Putin’s desperate lunge
to keep Ukraine. A display of “muscularity” that makes Putin
feel even more threatened could backfire, said
w
w
in
NYMag.com
.
Even the hawks admit that the only way
to deter Putin from invading the rest of Ukraine is with economic
and political pressure from a unified multinational coalition. The
“toughest” policy we can adopt right now, in other words, “looks
an awful lot like the kind Obama has always advocated.”
These criticisms have an absurd premise, said
in
Slate
.com
.
Short of starting a nuclear World War III, how exactly was
Obama supposed to be “tougher” with Putin? The U.S. has little
economic or political leverage over Russia, and since Putin’s great
fear is that he’ll keep losing former Soviet republics to the West,
there are no credible consequences “that would keep Putin from
doing whatever it takes to hang on to Ukraine.” Back in 2008,
Putin told the ostensibly tougher President George W. Bush that
Ukraine was a Russian “territory,” as opposed to a sovereign
nation, and Bush meekly shelved his pledge to invite Ukraine
into NATO. That same year, Putin brutally invaded Georgia
and gave two Russian-leaning provinces within Georgia their
Good week for:
Only in America
■■
Boring but important
High court broadens
whistleblower protections
The Supreme Court extended
whistleblower protections to
subcontractors as well as the
employees of publicly traded
companies. The protections
were passed in 2002 in re-
sponse to the Enron financial
scandal, when employees
claimed they faced retalia-
tion for exposing the energy
trading company’s misdeeds.
This week, the justices voted
6–3 in favor of extending
those protections to two
private contractors working
for Fidelity Investments.The
head of the National Whistle-
blowers Center said the court
had “closed a potentially
devastating loophole,” but
the three dissenting justices
warned the ruling could have
a “stunning reach,” and allow
even babysitters to pursue
frivolous litigation.
Strolling in Naples,
after the almost-bankrupt Italian city
began DNA-testing dog feces on its poop-covered sidewalks, so it
can prosecute residents who don’t pick up. “I know some people
find it funny that with all the problems the city has, we would
focus on dog poop,” said an official.
Diversion,
after a dedicated graffiti zone was set up at the Great
Wall of China, in the hope it would stop visitors from scratch-
ing their names on the historic barrier. Most of the graffiti on the
wall, said the Chinese media, is in English.
Trying anything,
after growing numbers of drought-afflicted
California farmers began hiring dowsers to locate underground
water. “Scientists don’t believe in it,” said vintner Marc Mondavi,
“but I do and most of the farmers in the [Napa] Valley do.”
■
A Florida teen cost her
father the $80,000 he won in
an age-discrimination lawsuit
when she gloated about it on
Facebook, thus violating the
settlement’s confidentiality
clause.The private school that
fired her father, a headmas-
ter, was “officially paying for
my vacation to Europe,” Dana
Snay, 19, posted on Face-
book. “SUCK IT.” A court then
rescinded the settlement.
■
A Texas high school
student was suspended after
he accidentally packed a
beer can in his lunch. Chaz
Seale says he thought he
was packing a soda can,
and turned the beer in to a
teacher. But officials sent him
to an alternative school for
two months. “I gave it to the
teacher thinking I wouldn’t
get in trouble,” Seale said,
“and I got in trouble.”
Bad week for:
■■
Infallibility,
after Pope Francis accidentally cursed in Italian
while delivering his weekly blessing at the Vatican, using the word
cazzo
, the equivalent to the F-bomb, rather than
caso
, which
means “example.”
Mississippi,
which has overtaken West Virginia as the fattest
state in the union, with an obesity rate of 35.4 percent. Montana
had the lowest obesity rate—19.6 percent.
Holy bribery,
after the Kentucky Baptist Convention started giv-
ing away free steak dinners and guns to encourage “unchurched
young rednecks” to come to church and accept Jesus. “Can you
picture Jesus giving away guns?’’ asked one disapproving pastor.
A
P
THE WEEK March 14, 2014
new
Morgan Hill, Calif.
An appeals court
dismayed conservatives and free speech
advocates last week when it ruled that a
California school acted properly in bar-
ring students from wearing American
flag T-shirts on the Mexican-American
holiday Cinco de Mayo. The case dates
back to May 5, 2010, when the princi-
pal of Live Oak High School in Morgan
Hill told students wearing the T-shirts to
turn them inside out or take them off.
A panel of judges from the 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals said that the school’s
decision was correct given the “ongoing
racial tension and gang violence within
the school,” and that school officials had
“presciently avoided an altercation.”
William Becker, a lawyer for one of the
students, lambasted the decision, saying
it “upheld the rights of Mexican students
celebrating a holiday of another country
over U.S. students proudly supporting
this country.” He said he would
seek a rehearing of the case.
Washington, D.C.
The Supreme
Court this week implied that Florida was
unconstitutionally executing “mentally
retarded” inmates through its use of
a controversial IQ test. The state cur-
rently uses a rigid IQ standard of 71 to
determine whether a death row inmate is
eligible for execution. Lawyers for death
row inmate Freddie Lee Hall, who was
convicted of beating, raping, and kill-
ing a 21-year-old pregnant newlywed in
1978 and has an IQ score of 71, told the
court that Florida’s criterion fails to take
into account the margin of error endemic
in all IQ testing, and excludes other
assessments that found Hall to be “men-
tally retarded” since childhood. Justice
Anthony Kennedy appeared to agree,
accusing Florida of failing “to follow the
standards that are set by the people that
designed and administer and interpret
the tests.” A ruling is expected by June.
New York City
Jury selection
began this week
in the terrorism
trial of Osama
bin Laden’s
son-in-law, the
highest-ranking
al Qaida figure
to face trial on U.S. soil since the 9/11
attacks. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was cap-
tured in Jordan last year and flown to
New York City, where he faces federal
charges of conspiring to kill Americans
and supporting terrorists in his role as
al Qaida’s spokesman. Government
prosecutors reportedly intend to open
the trial by showing jurors a picture of
Abu Ghaith with bin Laden on Sept. 12,
2001, as well as videos of subsequent
speeches promising more attacks on the
U.S. “The Americans must know that
the storm of airplanes will not stop, God
willing, and there are thousands
of young people who are as
keen about death as Americans
are about life,” Abu Ghaith said
in an October 2001 speech.
Abu Ghaith in 2001
Cornyn: A status quo win
Austin
Establishment
Republicans dealt a blow to some of
their Tea Party challengers in a series of
Texan primaries this week. Sen. John
Cornyn routed right-wing fringe candi-
date Steve Stockman, a Texas representa-
tive whose campaign bumper stickers
read, “If babies had guns they wouldn’t
be aborted,” while Rep. Pete Sessions
defeated challenger Katrina Pierson, win-
ning more than two thirds of the vote.
But the Tea Party did score some state
victories, with incumbent Lt. Gov. David
Dewhurst—who was knocked out of the
2012 Senate race by Ted Cruz—forced
into a May runoff by conservative talk
show host Dan Patrick. In another race,
George P. Bush, the 37-year-old nephew
of former President George W. Bush and
son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush,
won his debut election for land commis-
sioner. Gubernatorial candidates Wendy
Davis, a Democrat, and Republican Greg
Abbott easily won their primaries, setting
up a November face-off.
Canning: Thwarted
Louisville
Democratic Kentucky
Gov. Steve Beshear this week said that he
would hire outside attorneys to defend
the state’s ban on recognizing same-sex
marriages, after the state attorney general
refused to do so. Attorney General Jack
Conway said he wouldn’t appeal a fed-
eral judge’s February decision to overturn
Kentucky’s voter-imposed ban on recog-
nizing the unions. “I would be defending
discrimination,” he said. “That I will not
do.” After opponents of same-sex mar-
riage accused Conway of “spiking the
case,” Beshear said he had
acted so that the Supreme
Court would ultimately
decide the issue. Plaintiff
Michael Deleon, who mar-
ried Gregory Bourke in
Canada, said he was
“dumbfounded” by
Beshear’s decision.
Morristown, N.J.
A New
Jersey judge refused this week to order
a couple sued by their estranged teen
daughter to give her $650 week in
expenses and pay her private high school
tuition. Rachel Canning, 18, claims her
parents kicked her out of their house
and then refused to pay for her Morris
Catholic High School education after
they demanded she stop seeing her boy-
friend. But Sean and Elizabeth Canning
say Rachel left voluntarily after refusing
to follow their house rules concerning
curfew and chores. The student and
her parents met in court this week for
the first time in five months, days after
Rachel filed a lawsuit for expenses,
private school fees, and future college
tuition. The family court judge denied
the girl’s initial request for support, but
will rule on the lawsuit after a second
hearing in April.
,
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)
Beshear
THE WEEK March 14, 2014
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